The Turing Machine Made Real, In LEGO

October 7, 2024 by 20 Comments

The British mathematician and pioneer of computing Alan Turing published a paper in 1936 which described a Universal Machine, a theoretical model of a computer processor that would later become known as a Turing Machine. Practical computers don’t quite follow the design of a Turing Machine, but if we are prepared to sacrifice its need for an infinitely long paper tape it’s quite possible to build one. This is what [The Bananaman] has done using LEGO as a medium, and if you’d like one for yourself you can even vote for it on the LEGO ideas website.

There’s a video for the project which we’ve placed below, and it goes into quite some detail on the various mechanisms required. Indeed for someone used to physical machinery it’s a better explanation through seeing the various parts than many paper explanations. Not for the first time we’re bowled over by what is possible through the use of the LEGO precision mouldings, this is a machine which would have been difficult and expensive to build in the 1930s by individually machining all its parts.

With just shy of six thousand supporters and a hefty 763 days left at time of writing, there’s plenty of time for it to garner support. But if you want one don’t delay, boost the project by voting for it early.

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JawnCon 0x1 Kicks Off Friday, Tickets Almost Gone

October 7, 2024 by 3 Comments

Of all nature’s miraculous gifts, few can compare to the experience of witnessing a new hacker con grow. If you’re in the Philadelphia area this weekend, you can get a front-row seat to this rare spectacle as JawnCon moves into its second year.

Running Friday into Saturday at Arcadia University, JawnCon 0x1 promises to be a celebration of technology, with a unique bend towards the glory days of the 80s and 90s — back when screeching noises coming out of the back of your computer was nothing to worry about. With talks that cover resurrecting payphones and spinning up your own AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), to a badge that will let attendees literally dial into an array of early Internet services, hackers of a certain vintage should feel right at home.

JawnCon Modem Badge

No gray beard? No problem. The early Internet theme certainly isn’t meant to exclude the younger players. In fact, quite the opposite. There’s an undeniable benefit to studying the fundamentals of any topic, and just as the 4-bit badge from Supercon 2022 gave many attendees their first taste of programming bare metal, JawnCon 0x1 ticket holders will get the opportunity to study protocols and techniques which you don’t often get a chance to work with these days. How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen pppd?

As of this writing there are still tickets available, but it’s getting down to the wire so we wouldn’t recommending sitting on that fence for too much longer. Judging by what this team managed to pull off in their first year, we’re confident that JawnCon 0x1 (and beyond) are going to be well worth the trip.

Hack On Self: The Alt-Tab Annihilator

October 7, 2024 by 43 Comments

Last time, I told you about a simple script I made to collect data about my laptop activity, talked about why collecting data about yourself is a moral imperative, and shared the upgraded script with you alongside my plans for it. Today, I will show you a problem I’ve been tackling, with help of this script and the data it gives, and I also would love to hear your advice on a particular high-level problem I’m facing.

Today’s problem is as old as time – I often can’t focus on tasks I badly need done, even ones I want done for myself. This has been a consistent problem in my life, closing off opportunities, getting me to inadvertently betray my friends and family, hurting my health and well-being, reinforcing a certain sort of learned helplessness, and likely reinforcing itself as it goes, too.

It’s deeply disturbing to sit down fully intending to work on a project, then notice no progress on it hours later, and come to a gut-wrenching realization you’ve had hundreds of such days before – I think this screws with you, on a fundamental level. Over the years, I’ve been squeezing out lessons from this failure mode, making observations, trying out all sorts of advice, in search of a solution.

Join me today in non-invasive brain augmentation and reprogramming, as I continue trying to turn my life around – this time, with help of my laptop, a computer that I already spend a ton of time interfacing with. Ever notice that starting work on a task  is often the hardest part of it? It’s the same for me, and I decided to hack away at it.

Staying On Track

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Vehicle-To-Everything: The Looming Smart Traffic Experience

October 7, 2024 by 47 Comments

Much of a car’s interaction with the world around it is still a very stand-alone, analog experience, regardless of whether said car has a human driver or a self-driving computer system. Mark I eyeballs or equivalent computer-connected sensors perceive the world, including road markings, traffic signs and the locations of other road traffic. This information is processed and the car’s speed and trajectory are adjusted to ideally follow the traffic rules and avoid unpleasant conversations with police officers, insurance companies, and/or worse.

An idea that has been kicked around for a few years now has been to use wireless communication between cars and their environment to present this information more directly, including road and traffic conditions, independent from signs placed near or on the road. It would also enable vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V), which somewhat like the transponders in airplanes would give cars and other vehicles awareness of where other traffic is hanging out. Other than V2V, Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) would also include communication regarding infrastructure (V2I), pedestrians (V2P) and an expansive vehicle-to-network (V2N) that gives off strong Ghost in the Shell vibes.

Is this is the future of road traffic? The US Department of Transport (DOT) seems to think that its deployment will be a good thing, but V2X has been stuck in regulatory hurdles. This may now change, with the DOT releasing a roadmap for its deployment.

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First Benchies In Stainless Steel, With Lasers

October 7, 2024 by 19 Comments

DIY 3D printing in metal is a lot more complicated than we thought. And this video from [Metal Matters] shows two approaches, many many false starts, and finally, a glorious 78.9% success! (And it’s embedded below for your enjoyment.)

The first half of the video is dedicated to the work on a laser welding system that doesn’t pan out in the end at all. But the missteps are worth watching as well, and they hammer home the difficulties of melting metal reliably with nothing more than coherent light. Things like reflection, the difficulty of getting good process control cameras, and finally the whole thing slumping as multiple layers stack up on each other make this approach to 3D construction look nearly impossible.

Indeed, around halfway through the video, the focus shifts toward a metal-powder sintering machine, and this one is a success! Metal dust is deposited layer by layer, and fused with a totally different laser. The tricky bits here range from esoteric problems like making the laser fuse the metal dust without blasting it, to simple things like the geometry of the scraper that ensures even layer heights. And once you’ve got all that down, getting a good pattern down for 2D infill in metal is non-trivial.

A sweet half-scale metal Benchy emerges at the end, so why does [Metal Matters] call this a 78.9% success? Because that’s the density of the final print, and he is shooting for 100%. But we wouldn’t be so harsh. We’ve seen how far he’s come since the first machines, and this is a huge advance. We’re looking forward to the next video update in a year or two!

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WiFi Meets LoRa For Long Range

October 7, 2024 by 20 Comments

What do you get when you cross WiFi and LoRa? Researchers in China have been doing this, and they call the result WiLo. They claim to get reliable connections over about half a kilometer. Typical WiFi runs 40 to 60 meters, barring any Pringle’s cans or other exotic tricks.

According to [Michelle Hampson] writing in IEEE Spectrum, the researchers manipulated Wi-Fi’s OFDM multiplexing to emulate LoRa’s chirp-spreading signal. The advantage is that existing WiFi hardware can use the protocol to increase range.

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Towards Solderless PCB Prototyping

October 6, 2024 by 17 Comments

When we think of assembling a PCB, we’re almost always thinking about solder. Whether in paste form or on the spool, hand-iron or reflow, some molten metal is usually in the cards. [Stephen Hawes] is looking for a solderless alternative for prototyping, and he shows us the progress he’s made toward going solderless in this video.

His ulterior motive? He’s the designer of the LumenPNP open-source pick-and-place machine, and is toying with the idea of a full assembly based just on this one machine. If you strapped a conductive-glue extruder head on the machine in addition to the parts placer, you’d have a full assembly in one step. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

[Stephen] first tries Z-tape, which is really cool stuff. Small deformable metal balls are embedded in a gel-like tape, and conduct in only the Z direction when parts are pushed down hard into the tape. But Z-tape is very expensive, requires a bit of force to work reliably, and [Stephen] finds that the circuits are intermittent. In short, Z-tape is not a good fit for the PNP machine.

But what [Stephen] does find works well is a graphite-based conductive glue. In particular, he likes the Bare Conductive paint. He tries another carbon-based paint, but it’s so runny that application is difficult, while the Bare stuff is thick and sticky. (They won’t tell you their secret formula, but it’s no secret how the stuff is basically made.) That ends up looking very promising, but it’s still pretty spendy, and [Stephen] is looking to make his own conductive paste/paint pretty soon. That’s particularly appealing, because he can control the stickiness and viscosity, and he’ll surely let us in on the secret sauce.

(We’re armchair quarterbacking here, but the addition of a small amount of methyl cellulose and xanthan gum works to turn metal powder into a formable, printable metal clay, so it might make a carbon paste similarly adjustably sticky.)

We love the end-goal here: one machine that can apply a conductive paint and then put the parts into the right place, resulting in a rough-and-ready, but completely hands-off assembly. You probably wouldn’t want to use this technique if the joint resistance was critical, or if you needed the PCB to stand up to abuse. There’s a reason that everyone in industry uses molten metal, after all. But for verifying a quick one-off, or in a rapid-prototyping environment? This would be a dream.

We’ve seen other wacky ways to go solderless before. This one uses laser-cut parts to hold the components on the PCB, for instance. And for simply joining a couple wires together, we have many more solutions, many thanks to you all in the comments!

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